Microsoft Surface Team Answers Consumers’ Questions

REDMOND, USA – Microsoft Surface‘s general manager answers potential users’ questions on Reddit, while another Redmond employee rode tablet as a skateboard to show its durability.

Windows tablet development division representative Steven Sinofsky rode one of the Microsoft Surface prototypes as a skateboard, as a part of a demonstration of the features of the tablet, and its durability in particular.

The Surface’s combination of a magnesium case, Gorilla Glass 2 front panel and an optically bonded in-cell display seems to offer incredible durability as not only Sinofsky was able to ride it, but also to perform jumps on it several times and to use the device normally after the tests.

In an interview with Microsoft Surface general manager Panos Panay, even more details on the features of the Surface tablet are revealed. The aim of the company was to produce a tablet offering eight hours of a fully-functional device with one battery charge, while keeping it well equipped and usable.

The durability of the tablet, however, limited some of the possible hardware that can be incorporated in it, and especially notable is the lack of NFC for that reason.

Although the resolution of the tablet is not very impressive, 1366×768, Panat clarifies that it’s not only the resolution determines good viewability of a display, and notes that the amount of light reflected off Surface’s screen is around 5.5%-6.2%, while the closest competitor, the iPad 3, is at 9.9% .

It is also interesting to know that out of the 32 GB of internal storage, around 20 GB only will be available to the user for apps installation, while the optional SD card offers only extra storage space.

3G connectivity was also spared owing to the fact that less than 20% of the users actually use and need this capability, and it is easy to add it via the full-sized USB 2.0 port of the tablet.